Yet Another Thing You Learned in School That is Wrong

Play War Thunder for FREE on PC, PS®5 and Xbox Series X|S: playwt.link/wt.... Follow the link to download the game and get your exclusive bonus now. See you in battle!
This video is #sponsored by WarThunder.
Love content? Check out Simon's other KZbin Channels:
Biographics: / @biographics
Geographics: / @geographicstravel
Warographics: / @warographics643
MegaProjects: / @megaprojects9649
SideProjects: / @sideprojects
Into The Shadows: / intotheshadows
TopTenz: / toptenznet
Highlight History: / @highlighthistory
Business Blaze: / @brainblaze6526
Casual Criminalist: / thecasualcriminalist
Decoding the Unknown: / @decodingtheunknown2373
→Some of our favorites: • Featured
→Subscribe for new videos every day!
www.youtube.co...

[@TodayIFoundOut]

Play War Thunder for FREE on PC, PS®5 and Xbox Series X|S: playwt.link/wttodayifoundoutbonus . Follow the link to download the game and get your exclusive bonus now. See you in battle!

[@williammontgrain6544]

See you there! I'm DanklinRoosevelt on WT. DankSinatra was taken.

[@TinyBearTim]

@@williammontgrain6544 I’m telling you now save yourself while you still can

[@SkyValleyStuff]

i prefer world of tanks. ten years

[@fvckyoutubescensorshipandt2718]

If they already have 50M players yet are begging for more with marketing War Thunder is apprently a bunch of greedy bastards, so fuck them.

[@bartistclord1916]

You Simon could and should make yet another channel called this video title. the "Yet Another Thing You Learned in School That is Wrong" channel. If your writers looked into local schools, they could easily come up with hundreds of topics for scripts. A couple examples: I was taught that Paul Revere Just Paul, made that famous ride from beginning to end (and that is false). Columbus, etc. You could re-use some of your other videos such as the food pyramid video. I think it would really resonate with the youth. as in, give them some ammo in their fight against being lied to all day long. Or make a playlist of your videos which specialized in correcting falsehoods taught for decades.

[@stephenk.1997]

I think a form of the tongue map should remain part of the curriculum to teach kids the importance of falsifiability in the pursuit of science.

[@amstrad00]

I agree. The map and experiment could be a great way to teach the scientific method, treating the map as a hypothesis and then conducting the required experiment to prove or disprove it.

[@firstlast-fr1le]

I am not sure that would make sense. Do you mean you want to teach them wrong so that they don't believe in science or that science is wrong? If you want to include it in passing to teach scientific method, there are better ways. If it is to teach them that science continues to grow and expand knowledge, then okay sure. Even then I don't think it is the best way to get the point across but could be used as an example.

[@amstrad00]

@@firstlast-fr1le It's to teach that science isn't infallible and shouldn't always be blindly accepted at truth. Treat the diagram as a hypothesis and then disprove the hypothesis. An additional lesson could then take place where the presented hypothesis and experiment work out in favor of the hypothesis.

[@stephenk.1997]

@@firstlast-fr1le Amstrad has the right of it. In order for something to be a hypothesis falsifiable criteria is just as important as the idea. People need to be taught to identify that. Science is as much about the negative results as it is about the positive ones, eliminate all the negatives and you’re left with the truth. It also teaches not to depend on a person’s expertise-only trust in what they can demonstrate.

[@firstlast-fr1le]

Okay. I totally misunderstood where you were going with it as well as where you were coming from. Didn't know if it was from a religious point (or otherwise) and wants to create a generation or 20 of science deniers or what.

[@purplealice]

I have read many "silliest thing a person came to the ER for" accounts where a mother brought in a child and complained that his tongue was covered with bumps, which were diagnosed as "taste buds" by the ER doc.

[@dgray7537]

Poor kid, I hope they are ok now.

[@titijijo1047]

Oh no, not taste buds….

[@Ingrid922]

Did she also look at her own tongue?

[@Foolish188]

The persistence of the tongue map is because textbooks are notoriously plagiarized from older textbooks. Stephen Jay Gould wrote a great essay on the topic.

[@stapuft]

oh yeah, i plagiarized it for an essay once.

[@terryarmbruster9719]

Its more the politics what gets taught in pre college schools. Hint you'll never ever learn in any university now that the Americas was populated via the Bering straits. S American natives and north american natives share very little DNA.

[@stapuft]

@@terryarmbruster9719 well, i mean, i learned in middle school about how the people from the russo-asisatic area, came to the americas across a "land bridge" in that area, that connected it to alaska, at least the north american natives anyway, those that stayed, became "the mongols" eventually, and those that came over, became the "inuits" and other various tribes of natives, untill you get to a point around mexico where they started to mix with the natives from the south, and then that new mix is what ended up populating most of the americas.

[@olly_1558]

Fascinating as I have actually read a very similar essay by Professor James Russell

[@Nekomusu]

@Robert Sears You very clearly did not watch the video.

[@TheGholiday]

I once failed an assignment about how the courts functioned because I wrote facts contrary to the text books which were blatantly incorrect. When I questioned the teacher, I was told they didn’t care about the text books being wrong, I just had to repeat what the text books said and not my own personal experience within the court system which was part of my job.

[@Mikej1592]

and then you learned that, especially in america, school is not about learning information, but how to memorize then regurgitate upon demand said information regardless of whether its correct, accurate, or even true.

[@titaniusanglesmith9690]

@@Mikej1592 Seems you faired well in the environment you described...Seeing as how you presumably take someone else's experience as fact, when its just an anecdote pertaining to a topic that is likely to be fairly influenced by the writers ego.

[@annahappen7036]

@@titaniusanglesmith9690 seems you don't know what living in America is like or you live in a privileged bubble. This is definitely true. Our education system is a joke. Regurgitate and become a good like capitalist worker done.

[@Ken_Scaletta]

This never happened. You just misunderstood something.

[@Ken_Scaletta]

What is wrong with the American education system exactly? What do you know about education? What is your background and e4xperience with it and where do you get your ability to pass sweeping judgements on something as gargantuan and multivariant as the US education system? I never hear anybody whining about American education who actually has an education.

[@xR0N1Nx]

You can also debunk that taste map from eating one warhead. You will definitely feel sour over your entire mouth. Ever kid knows that

[@professorvaudevillain]

Eat enough of them and you'll experience sour over the whole of your being!

[@willmfrank]

@@professorvaudevillain I experienced sour over the whole of my being just by seeing the cartoon on the wrapper!

[@davel9514]

"You will definitely feel sour over your entire mouth" You won't feel ANYTHING! Trust me, dead is dead! 🤣

[@nicholasholmes1675]

Nah, that is baby sour. For true sour challenge masters see the sour candy "Nuclear Waste." Comes in a drum as if it is nuclear

[@RedWingsninetyone]

The older I've gotten, the more I've begun to thought that school information isn't accidentally wrong as deliberately. Not in a sort of "conspiracy theory" type wrong but more in a "this is the easiest way to get 10 year olds to get a basic understanding of this subject" kind of way. That's also led to learning there's always much more to every story, as I've gotten older.

[@littlejourneyseverywhere]

Outdated books, incorrect or just plain irrelevant information, straight up danger from everything from guns to COVID. But for just one really good word that wraps up my reasoning for homeschooling? Lice. I also was a teacher before my kids was born and just love everything about it. :) I love getting to see what fun activities and explosions I'll get to do with her each week. It's one of my great passions and I feel so grateful every day that we're in a position for me to be able to stay home and be her mom and teacher. ❤️

[@olmostgudinaf8100]

My daughter's science teacher said as much to us during one parents meeting. She said it pains her to have to teach the kids that there are 3 states of matter (solid, liquid, gas), but that anything else would be too much for the kids of that age.

[@SilverionX]

@@littlejourneyseverywhere Homeschooling is a fascinating subject to me. Where I live a child has both the right and the obligation to attend public school and only the most extreme cases allow education at home, which still has to conform to the specifications of the school the child would have attended had they not been forced to be at home (for example because of long term illness). It is in fact a crime (outside of those extreme cases) to withhold a child from school and will be met with fines and, probably eventually, the parents losing custody of the child. Swedes don't mess around with public school. :P

[@annahappen7036]

That's horriblly tragic. To think your own species isn't capable of intelligent learning from a young age.

[@RedWingsninetyone]

@@annahappen7036 you have to consider the limited capacity for understanding of abstract concepts and complexity of the situations, and not to mention shorter attention spans. They don't generally have any sort of appreciation or ability to comprehend a lot of the factors that go into historical events. No different than college students looking for jobs and looking at the $$ with little to no comprehension of what the benefits mean. Ideally, children would grow up to become curious and do more research on their own. Unfortunately, for one reason or another (time, interest, relevance, etc) they don't generally do this and if they ever do, sometimes it's simply misinformation that "sounds good."

[@elfpimp1]

I remember getting into an argument with my 8th grade science teacher about this. I remember reading about the map and decided to test it. It failed. Argued with my teacher and she lost. Then said play along for the grade..

[@KNR90]

American education?

[@rayhs1984]

The story behind "MSG is bad for you" is super weird. A Chinese doctor got a headache eating American Chinese food and wrote a letter to the editor. A TV chef saw the letter and accepted as fact that the MSG in American food caused the headache. He repeated this on TV and it became fact. Separate from this a professor claimed that it was all a prank that he wrote the letter as a joke and bragged about causing the panic. A student at his university looking into the myth of MSG for a paper uncovered the whole tyhing. NPR did an episode on it.

[@aceofspades9503]

Liked and commenting in the hopes of bumping this up- i'd love to see a Today I Found Out vid on this.

[@littlejourneyseverywhere]

My mom still SWEARS that's it's msg that makes her sick when she eats from certain Chinese places

[@Kas_Styles]

Fact fiend did a video on this. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fqvXqK16r7dmr9U

[@grabble7605]

@@samarnadra MSG is very common in all cuisine. It's in most meats, veggies and dairy. The "culprit" is that Americanized Chinese is frankly junk food. Sodium and fat and sugar galore. MSG's also stuffed into chips n' such, which are also junk food. And MSG tastes great so it encourages eating MORE junk food, causing MORE problems. It's all correlation, no causation.

[@grabble7605]

@@littlejourneyseverywhere MSG sensitivity actually is a thing, to be fair. But it's hardly common, and also Chinese takeout is absolutely stuffed with sugar, salt and fat. Eating enough will make _anyone_ feel a bit crummy which is where the whole myth started. MSG is also artificially crammed into Doritos and other junk food which furthered the correlation (but not causation) of MSG = bad. Also, MSG exists naturally in tomatoes, mushrooms, fish, cheese, corn, peas, potatoes, shrimp, chicken, eggs...Ask her if any of that stuff makes her sick.

[@shadesofvioletcat]

I remember being confused by the tongue map when I learned it in school. I was like “I’m sure I can taste all of the tastes with the tip of my tongue” but since it was taught in school I didn’t question it too hard, brushed that discrepancy off, and moved on after answering my test as I was taught.

[@HweolRidda]

Ignoring provable facts in favour of what leaders say has become a serious problem in the USA. I hope you outgrew it.

[@shadesofvioletcat]

@@HweolRidda it is definitely a huge problem and not even just within the US. I’d argue it starts at home with “because I said so” type of upbringings. I’ve definitely gotten better but surely there’s some of it still in there in my head. But hey, that’s what therapy is for.

[@Ingrid922]

@@shadesofvioletcat I hate "because I said so" so much!

[@KenseiSanjian]

My science/biology teacher in jr high told me that diagram was bs and that was not how it worked. That was in 1985.

[@eekee6034]

A rare good example!

[@nicholasorr6051]

I just can't believe that a concept like this that was in question when my parents were in primary school (1960s) and definitely disproven when they were at high school (1970s), was still being taught to me at primary school in the 2000s! How does a known falsehood get taught for 30+ years as a fact? Hard to know who exactly is to blame but somebody somewhere along the line screwed up big time!

[@cacoethes1366]

It highlights a common flaw in human nature, as well as the slowness of school curriculums to b updated, that we don’t like admitting we were wrong. A teacher will remember being taught it, it will have made sense and as SImon mentioned - it’s a neat, ordered view. People often won’t question “knowledge” they already have, as humans hate to admit they were wrong and/or believed something incorrect their whole lives. You see it all the time, especially with the rise of fake news, where once a person believes a story or fact they won’t accept being told it’s false and often the more you try to convince them they are wrong, even with a mountain of evidence, the more entrenched in the belief they’ll become.

[@deanfirnatine7814]

Years (well over a decade) after it was proven Vikings were the first known Europeans to reach North America the schools were still teaching Columbus was first. Public schools suck.

[@HaleyMary]

I was taught this while growing up in the '90s. Hard to believe it was taught for so long.

[@HweolRidda]

Elementary school science texts are written by people who know little science and typically taught from by people who know less. My son's education involved learning 1) what was true and 2) when to write something else for the treacher. However, to be fair I should add that maybe a quarter of the teachers did in fact know their science well enough to teach it in school.

[@X_Baron]

People supposedly have the strongest beliefs in facts (or "facts") they learn in school when they are like 7 or 8 years old. This may be false too for all I know, but the primary school text books are probably significantly less science-based than what comes later. The knowledge that "everyone knows" and should know is sort of culturally sticky.

[@ruaboutasize14]

In a biology class, the prof was discussing the high glucose levels found in semen. A young female (freshman) raised her hand and asked "If I understand, you're saying there is a lot of glucose, as in sugar in male semen?" "That's correct", responded the prof, going on to add statistical info. Raising her hand again, the girl asked, "Then why doesn't it taste sweet?" After a stunned silence, the whole class burst out laughing, the poor girl's face turned bright red, and as she realized exactly what she had inadvertently said (or rather implied), she picked up her books without a word and walked out of class... and never returned. However, as she was going out the door, the Prof's reply was classic... Totally straight-faced he answered her question, "It doesn't taste sweet because the taste-buds for sweetness are on the tip of your tongue and not the back of your throat."

[@Ingrid922]

It actually has a bit of a bleach-like taste. Furthermore, the tip of your tongue is not the only place you can taste sweetness. That teacher was wrong.

[@ruaboutasize14]

@@Ingrid922 Look up…. That’s the joke going over your head.

[@mackenziemoore5088]

Simon. do a video about war thunder forum military leaks lol

[@jalsarrelevantchaos8817]

I would love that. Wouldnt be shocked the Chinese leakers were put to death or disappeared.

[@downerzzz3463]

😋

[@SEAZNDragon]

I think he did a Brain Blaze on the leaks.

[@mackenziemoore5088]

@@SEAZNDragon I'm woefully behind on business blaze episodes 😭😭

[@vargasbryce]

@@mackenziemoore5088 business blaze?? You ARE way behind. Buckle up buddy. It's fitna get wild for a bit

[@sabrinasugar2819]

Thank you! I remember asking the teacher questions about the taste map and feeling confused as to why I tasted all over my tongue if I was supposed to taste in sections of it. I ended up just memorizing it for the grade. 🤦🏻‍♀️

[@Lonemite]

See I was the opposite, if I knew it was wrong I kept my stance. Let me tell you, American schools don’t like it when you fight what they NEED you to think. We still tell kids a white man found the americas, and that we had an awesome relationship with the native population.

[@firstlast-fr1le]

@@Lonemite Have you found that bucking the system in corporate America is a good thing? You know, tell the boss he is wrong - take it to the division manager that you wont do it the way the supervisor wants it? Or perhaps you are in upper management and you like when young upstarts tell you how you are running the company wrong? Perhaps you have told police that you are a free man and will do as you damn well please and they can go to to hell? The public schools in the US are designed to create factory workers as that is what was needed at the time the system was created. The teacher and school administrators didn't "NEED" anything from you and in fact did not give two shits about you one way or the other. They had a job to do and you were just another kid. They do not have any "NEEDS" from the kids that come through the system.

[@charlesdye8367]

I did as well back in the 60s. I distinctly remember telling my 5th grade teacher my tongue tasted all over and she said that hers did too.

[@ranimeRAT]

Same here, but I got made fun of for not "getting it". This is the same religious school who told me "Muslims are people who have no religion" and got told off for claiming to be a Muslim because of it

[@fastinradfordable]

My teachers loved me more every time i said…. Yeah but we stole it all from the natives

[@Chibichunga]

Starts at 1:15

[@MrApolloTom]

I did this experiment at least twice at school and when it failed to produce the expected results, my teachers were at least open to a reasonable discussion each time. They said they thought it didn't work too well in practice as the substance is hard to taste until you start to chew and then it gets moved around.

[@tishaw.8254]

This and the food pyramid have been notoriously known to be a lie. Wonder what other lies we were told😂😂😂

[@BeersAndBeatsPDX]

Blood is blue and your heart is slightly to left

[@ramkitty]

@@BeersAndBeatsPDX many hearts are too left

[@BeersAndBeatsPDX]

@@ramkitty But are all of them. I remember being taught that everyone's heart is to their left.

[@marksprinkle]

Wait... are you not planning on eating your nine servings of vegetables today?

[@JeffVanRooy]

As children we were taught that Blue Yellow Red are the primary colors meaning that you can mix them to make any other color, which is a lie and is still being taught to this very day.

[@SimoneMowatt]

This was never apart of my schooling but seeing how it was wrong, I guess I didn't miss out on anything 😅 🤷‍♀️

[@habibishapur]

I could tell something wasnt right because i noticed i could taste with my entire tongue. As an adult its obvious that the tongue map isnt real. Im just shocked that somehow the teacher couldnt see what was inconsistent about it, but a 7 y/o could. Ive had several episodes like that in my life, and it makes me wonder whether skepticism is intrinsic, since i used to show signs that i would become a questioning skeptic since before i knew what skepticism was.

[@timothyhall963]

I knew it was wrong as a child because I knew where I could taste sweet and salty or sour on my own tongue.

[@CaptainMarvelsSon]

Any child already knows this to be false when they are fed something that they don't like and the terrible taste seems to fill up the entire mouth, not just one tiny section at the front of the tongue.

[@DarkClavier369]

Nice outro, lol. Haven't seen a run of puns, done that smoothly, for a good while. The "Dad-Force" is strong with this one, lmao 🤣

[@michaelmoorrees3585]

I'm so old that Umami, wasn't even on the tongue map. The tongue map shows how mistakes get into encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, due mostly to lacking details. This is also the common political error of "painting with a broad brush", and the classical "strawman". I can't meet my 8th grade science teacher until, I too, leave this mortal world.

[@Clynikal]

Reject umami as a seperate taste. It’s for wankers who can’t describe a salty taste without having to use a new word.

[@mustangnawt1]

Ha! Wankers. Wouldn’t know Unami if it but me in the arse

[@markmiller6402]

Me too mate, I’d never heard of it

[@markmiller6402]

@@Clynikal . Agreed

[@ginnyjollykidd]

Wikipedia is a far cry from a real encyclopedia like _Britannica_ or _Worldbook_ or even _Compton's_ No good encyclopedia will be missing citations. No good encyclopedia will let just anyone update it or rewrite it. Updating comes from the company or organization. Don't use Wikipedia as a primary source-or cite it as a source even. It is, by definition, unreliable.

[@Thanatology101]

I did an experiment on this in elementary school after reading about this supposed map. Me and one of our TAs blindfolded people and then used a dropper with flavored liquids on different parts of the tongue to see if the testee (tastee?) could identify it. Unsurprisingly now in hindsight, most everyone had zero issue identifying the flavor regardless of where it was placed on the tongue. As a child I was flummoxed that a book could have the audacity to be wrong.

[@queenannsrevenge100]

Learning is an ongoing process, sometimes even with some of our most basic laws and theorems. Keep in mind that electrical diagrams are still written as if charge is flowing from positive to negative, not vice versa. On,y reason it’s still written that way is because it’s the way it’s taught, and as long as it’s consistent, it still works. But because Ben Franklin and those after him wrote it that way, that’s the way it’s still written. Even Newtonian physics weren’t completely correct, being better explained by Einstein, Hawking and others later on, but since Newton’s Laws still apply to so many of our daily applications in life, we just keep teaching them.

[@BigMobe]

It wouldn't be the first time I informed someone that I was right as a kid and they were 100% wrong as an adult.

[@DustinRodriguez1_0]

It is possible for absolutely anyone who can speak to say true things, and equally possible for them to say false things, which is why you always need to ignore who is saying something and deal with their claims themselves in isolation to figure out what's right.

[@vilena5308]

I remember that tongue map and, yes, i knew it was nonsense then. When you think about it, why would the tongue receptors be so starkly specialized?

[@bobthegoat7090]

You mentioned quite complicated experiments that showed the tongue map to be wrong, but what about the most obvious? When you put salt on the middle of your tongue, you can taste it.

[@OutyMan]

1:35

[@ARIXANDRE]

During many years, I'd ace SATs by answering questions like Pluto being a planet. If it were today, I'd probably still be in high school. What is right and wrong anymore??? 😂

[@joshyoung1440]

What exactly are you saying? You can't even take the SAT for "many years." I don't know the limits, I only took it once and got a 2140 so I didn't retake it (cause I was only 10 points behind my school's valedictorian, so I figured I was fine) but like... for one thing, you don't stay in high school for extra years, they just don't give you a diploma, and for another, it's really a false delimma when people go "what even is true anymore????". Most facts stay facts, and some things get updated as science learns more. Throwing your hands up and going "WELL I MIGHT AS WELL NOT EVEN TRY, EVERYTHING I LEARN TODAY WILL BE FALSE TOMORROW" isn't helpful or true.

[@AngelNearDestruction]

@@joshyoung1440 it isn't completely helpful or completely true but it does have some truth to it. A better example than pluto is the Brontosaurus and whether or not it's a dinosaur. Quantum theories as well, as that is where the most science is happening right now. As it turns out, we prove at least dozens of accepted facts as wrong every year and get closer and closer to real truth; understanding that this is how the world works and what is real or factual is subjective to perspective is beneficial for many reasons and it is most definitely true. Now is it PRACTICAL? No. Knowing that facts change and that we don't really know anything doesn't really solve real world problems.

[@notthemaster763]

fun fact about the game in the ad "war thunder" has lots of issues with people being upset about the accuracy and accidentally unveiling government secrets on their forums

[@rigdzindrolma7148]

I don’t worry about govt secrets. I worry about militarization of crazy Americans.

[@historynerd72]

Oh yeah i remember being taught this in South Africa also around grade 6 but my science teacher also told us it's a load of rubbish

[@classicforreal]

>here's something that schools been teaching you that's wrong >War Thunder, the most "accurate" military game "ever"

[@izzymhee2430]

One thing I learned that is definitely correct: When you set up a lamp you turn the seam on the shade to the back so it doesn't show

[@IvoryOasis]

School taught me that society and adults will deny simple facts that even a child can clearly see as long as a "higher authority" insists it's true. There were many instances in school that teachers kept claiming obviously false things. It was really pathetic.... but explains so much about American society.

[@eekee6034]

British too. :(

[@stevesteffen7001]

OMG, you had me rolling on the floor with your conclusion at the end.

[@SA-bc6jw]

A taste of the poetic.

[@billyalarie929]

That was actually amazing. The escalation was subtle but HUGE

[@anyawillowfan]

I'm seriously doubting any teachers today can afford such luxuries as avocados!

[@miketype1each]

The cool thing is, I've no idea if this was taught to me or not.

[@benthomason3307]

I just love it when neither the thumbnail nor title of a KZbin video give any indication as to what it's actually about.

[@dafttool]

I totally cheated filling out that tongue taste diagram in 5th grade. And I’m 100% sure the teacher knew it too, but didn’t say anything. I can still see the recognition & disappointment in her eyes as I handed a perfect replication to her, as she glanced at it, & then at me. 😞 shame

[@billyalarie929]

I’m truly sorry, friend. Nothing is worse than that deadly glance.

[@fastinradfordable]

That’s a shit teacher who assumes she didn’t teach it perfectly.

In what consisted your cheating?

[@dafttool]

@ We were supposed to test sweet, bitter, etc on our own tongues as homework, but instead, I just copied what it said on a diagram, marking out the zones exactly as shown. It was a rookie move on my part. Rest assured, my cheating skills improved as I got older. Lol

[@davel9514]

@@dafttool You can't cheat reality, my dude! Stick the tip of your tongue in ANYTHING and you WILL (most likely) taste it!

[@johnknapp952]

As I like to say "The science is NEVER settled". And those that do say the science is settles either don't know the science or don't look at the larger picture.

[@garretth8224]

Well gravity is settled science

[@jdb47games]

@@garretth8224 They said that in Newton's time, but our understanding of gravity changed circa 1900, and continues to evolve. Science is never settled, only religion is.

[@Torby4096]

By the time we got to the tongue map, I had already learned not to point out wrong things the science book said, when I noticed the crook's radiometer spins the wrong way from the book explanation.

[@cappyjones]

1:13. You're welcome 😁

[@justsomeperson5110]

The continued existence of the completely bogus tongue map and the use of it to teach "science" without anyone ever really questioning it is just proof of the susceptibility of the human mind to the power of suggestion. How many teachers, how many school children, how many parents, have all said, "Yep, this is totally legit," in spite of it being completely and totally wrong? All because they were told that's how it works, so their mind played a trick on them to make it seem legit. Or they failed to speak up the truth after observing the lie. Sheeple! That's all we are.

[@TheSilmarillian]

Not all of us lol

[@ginnyjollykidd]

"Sheeple!" Speak for yourself, TYVM!

[@TheSilmarillian]

@@ginnyjollykidd tk

[@ShirleyTimple]

Dude, I'm American. Most if not all of what I learned is wrong lol

[@extonjonas6820]

Boo

[@deanromanado5850]

Hahahaha

[@MsEsquire83]

💜

[@vargasbryce]

If only there were like....a platform with endless educational videos, maybe some even narrated by a bald fact boi..... if only....

[@ShirleyTimple]

@@vargasbryce why do you think I'm here!? Lol

[@JeremyWS]

The tongue map needs to become a forgotten piece of history.

[@allisonbergh4429]

Very well written episode, bravo Gilles! Wonderful reading as well, but Simon knew that already I’m sure 😆

[@glennchartrand5411]

It's basically how the British wound misspelling and mispronouncing aluminum Davy , who was a British Chemist, named it "Aluminum" and pronounced it " Ah-lum in-uhm" the but a typo added an extra "I" and turned it into "Aluminium". When the British realized why Americans were laughing at them they set about correcti....no ,what they actually did was a seven year long campaign of harassment until Davy publicly stated that he was wrong , it really was "Aluminium" and then the British kept insisting on their version being correct until it became a recognized alternate spelling. ( Quite possibly the most "British" moment ever in Science.) Which is why American Chemists and Engineers just roll their eyes when the British insist "Aluminum" is wrong.

[@eroraf8637]

I’m fairly certain that at least part of that is a gross misrepresentation of what actually happened. From all the sources I can find, it appears that Davy originally intended to name it “alumium” but added the n after further consideration, ostensibly because it sounded like “platinum”. The suffix was later changed to “-ium” in scientific circles for etymological consistency with other element names like helium, lithium, magnesium, etc. Sources: Wikipedia, Grammarist, and Merriam-Webster.

[@glennchartrand5411]

@@eroraf8637 You just did the very thing the video is about. In 1808 Sir Humpry Davy discovered a new metal by conducting experiments with electricity and Alum. He named the metal "Alumium" In 1812 he renamed the metal "Aluminum" In 1813 other British scientists started calling it "Aluminium" . ( There's that typo I was talking about ) When questioned about it in 1814 they replied it sounded "More Latin". In 1821 Davy published an open letter stating that he was now calling it "Aluminium" ...while the phrase "Will you crazy bastards leave me alone now?" Doesn't actually appear in the letter , it is implied.

[@eekee6034]

@@glennchartrand5411 I don't want to make too many excuses for Wikipedia, but there's a huge difference between making fancy excuses for a bunch of toffs who decided a different pronunciation sounded clever on the one hand, and on the other, teachers using the full power of their position to order little children to _believe_ the very opposite of facts clearly demonstrated by their senses.

[@perrydowd9285]

My yr8 science teacher told us that he didn't believe in the tongue map because the experiment never produced results unless the class he was teaching were told the expected outcome before they undertook the test. He was a good scientist and a better teacher.

[@pamelamays4186]

Your writers are so clever! They deserve an extra ration of gruel!

[@WraithWriter]

Simon has plenty of cereal, I understand...

[@kirbymarchbarcena]

I forgot most of what I've been taught since kindergarten...frankly, I learned more in KZbin.

[@ROBYNMARKOW]

Make that college for me..

[@kwhufc5769]

Shh the price of ad free KZbin is bad enough. Don't give them an excuse to charge more 😜 lol

[@demonzabrak]

@@kwhufc5769 the price of ad free KZbin is actually insultingly low, and indicates large scale systemic problems in the foundation of ad revenue based systems. It shows they don’t understand the value of their product at all, and that they possibly don’t know what their product even actually IS. We are. We’re the product. Our attention and our data. The fact that they charge about $0.24 per hour of watched ads is absurd. That’s a $2 CPM, or cost per Millie, which is 1000 “ad impressions.” Industry standard for an ad impression is 30 seconds, so that’s $2 for 30,000 seconds of human attention. 8 hours and 20 minutes. It’s about 1/30th the minimum wage. All 30 second ads are priced what 1 second ads should be.

[@philipbridler]

Shame, you should be embarrassed by the lack of education your parents gave you.

[@astrotrance]

The tongue map: From the same institution that gave you the Food Pyramid, and then had the audacity to claim everything we were being taught was indisputable fact we should memorize and take to heart.

[@rhondahuggins9542]

Wish I could quote the study, but published in Discovery magazine in late '90s...biologist was testing her theories not about where we (obviously) don't taste on the tongue, but how MUCH we taste. In her study, she found people who had highly sensitive tastebuds, which correlated with having more, were much particular about their food. She called them 'Supertasters'. Those test subjects were not overweight. The test subjects on the opposite end of the numbers of tastebuds and therefore sensitivity were overweight. Now of course, her study was small and I know that there are many, many factors that contribute to human development, but it was still an intriguing study.

[@ginnyjollykidd]

What's a more fun thing to demonstrate is the genetic ability (or not!) to taste Phenylthiocarbamide, otherwise known as PTC. being able to taste it is a dominant phenotype while not tasting it is recessive. The results are instantaneous. If you can taste it, it has a vile, bitter taste you react to immediately. I'm a taster and so are most of my family. But when my little sister tested Mom, Mom took the little test strip and rolled it around her mouth saying, "am I supposed to be tasting something? What am I supposed to taste?" This is one of the more satisfying genetics tests because it's so definitive. (needless to say, Mom is a non-taster.)

[@Dullfang2]

legit stuff. this is something i always bring up at work (medical job) when i talk of how i dont like that anyone acts like they know how the brain works. the brain is so complex. and right now its almost similar to this where we have it divided to different lobes like the frontal lobe controls conciousness, the occipital controls vision, etc. and then i say, remember that time they said the tongue's taste buds were divided into sections like bitter and sweet, and then they were like, 'oh hey, it turns out we were completely wrong about that.' i anticipate that will happen with the brain sometime soon.

[@krackerbear9315]

Rumour has it Leonardo DaVinci debunked a Surgery professor regarding a portion of human physiology erroneously presented in a Greek medical manual and taught for over 300 years. If memory serves, the disagreement occurred with the body part and error clearly on display before them yet the professors conviction in the textbook representation would not or could not perceive the dissimilarity. P.S. take with a box of salt. I have no idea where i got that story from.

[@MrMctastics]

In my 5th grade class we spent an hour eating sweet bitter and salty things in order to demonstrate this. Not even my stupid child brain could get tricked into beleiving this bullcrap

[@SidneyPatrickson]

I noticed that some sorts of chili burn more at some places than others. I didnt make scientifically tests i just started to mix them so everything burns equally. I wonder why some types burn more in the throat and other more on the lips for example.

[@OutyMan]

Haven't experimented with that, but I would guess a higher oil content would stick around and get all over things, like the lips, where less oily chilies might pass most but the back end sensors. Cayenne(red) seems to hit the lips more than green chili which hardly ever gets my lips stinging. Red may just be hotter, or maybe served in more oily dishes. Just pontificating. No idea.

[@ericemmons3040]

I've finally discovered the answer as to why I don't have a cat: I don't want Mr. Whiskers licking my ice cream bar or cone when I'm not looking. These videos are so educational. . .

[@scipio109]

@TodayIFoundOut The ancestors of cats could perceive sweetness with the same type of receptors we use. Cats still have pseudo genes for them, meaning genes that are no longer functional because of a mutation. So no we didn’t evolve novel receptors for sweetness we kept ours and cats lost theirs

[@paulforester6996]

That's nothing. My physics books were so outdated, that they had the atom wrong, like really wrong. The teachers commented on it also. I wouldn't be surprised if our physics books were copyright in the 60's. I graduated in the 1980's, btw.

[@brilliantcheesecake1894]

There's little scientific rigor involved in the creation of children's text books. This is an issue that hasn't been solved.

[@jjdraco7337]

Absolutely magnificent presentation! I watch almost all of your channels and love your vids. This one was especially enjoyable to me. Rock on Simon!

[@johnwhitley9209]

There is one more taste that no one has got yet; it's called "9-volt battery".

[@eekee6034]

PZINGGG! :D

[@TsukasaFanTc]

I was never taught this in school, but I remember playing a Magic School Bus game as a kid that showed this. Although the taste sections are not really where you taste things specifically, I have noticed that if I have too much of a particular flavor, it will linger on that designated zone (particularly salty and sour) if I have too much salt, I get a sore spot on the very tip of my tongue, and even now as I drink my honey and lemon tea, the lemon lingers on the sides of my tongue. So there was something to this thing, but I always knew that the taste sections weren't where you can exclusively taste certain flavors.

[@flyleelee5351]

When it comes to history, damn near everything taught in school is wrong

[@bikerbruce1988]

Of course, it’s just his story

[@dontcallmebaby6927]

Ooh that last statement dripping with the five tastes was BOOM!!! Well done Simon!

[@extonjonas6820]

I don't remember ever seeing this tongue map in school. Though I have seen it before

[@Felicity2121]

Nor me. Maybe I was sleeping at the time or I skipped that lesson to do something cool like smoking in the woods and eating gobstoppers with my equally cool peers.

[@okumabear]

Haven't we already had a word that exactly matches "umami" for....a long time? SAVORY, IT'S JUST CALLED SAVORY!

[@evilchaosboy]

So...Continue teaching our future generations a buncha tommyrot about the tongue. This leads to an even more chilling question; what forms of B.S. are they teaching our offspring? I mean what? The moon isn't made of green cheese? \m/

[@markmuir7338]

Everyone knows it's made of blue cheese. Don't let the color fool you! Can't trust those lying eyes.

[@nicholaslewis8594]

Can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m pretty sure I was never taught this. Maybe in the last few years its been removed.

[@marksprinkle]

This is the first time I've ever seen this tongue map.

[@calisahardy4845]

😃 oh I love you!! That ending was too funny!

[@daniellewis3330]

The story of MSG is wild.... Dude tastes his soup...ponders for a moment...researches flavor and builds a multinational empire out of it. Delicious.

[@marcriel8558]

I had a high-school math teacher insist that .99 repeating did not equal 1, even when shown the proof

[@EmilyJelassi]

I don't remember learning this in school. I wonder what else that we learned is wrong.. definitely the food pyramid!

[@patrickelliott2169]

Funny.. while I accept that cats don't pursue sweets, I find it quite odd that nearly every cat I have ever had as a pet liked dried apricots.

[@paulroberts3639]

I am a science teacher. And I never learned nor taught this ‘map’. Is it an American thing? It isn’t used in Australia.

[@GirlPhoenix85]

It definitely is an American thing; I don't know if it's also spread to any other countries.

[@gregsettle9725]

Truth is like a Truffle, rare and valuable whereas BS is the Kudzu we all try to work through.

[@jamiewilson4479]

I remember seeing the tongue map in school and thinking "that's a load of crap!" That's when I learned to question things.

[@Yakboy999]

Video suggestion: False things people still believe that just started out as rumor or unsubstantiated statements or things that are now known to be fraudulent (eg: MSG being bad for you, vaccines causing autism, cocomelon being addictive to kids, things like that). Maybe a "5 things people think that are based on nothing" video.

[@PolyesterMoustache]

They never taught this when I was in public school in the US, but my biology teacher in 2007 did try to teach us creationism against the curriculum. When I showed the slightest bit of curious skepticism she responded by tanking my grades in every possible subjective area to 0 for the whole year. Imagine being such a fragile spiteful asshole that a child asking a simple question once causes you to hold an unending grudge against them

[@hardrays]

well, at least they didn't adopt you. that kinda thing is hard to graduate from.

[@eroraf8637]

Yeesh, hope she got fired.

[@eekee6034]

All too many teachers act emotionally like they're still in middle school themselves. Not a majority, thankfully, but enough to cause trouble for far too many good kids.

[@brianwestover147]

Simon can you make a video on whether or not there is any science behind the whole essential oils thing aside from the placebo effect?

[@lovleelaura88]

Slowly eating a jelly donut and coffee while watching this for science

[@PrisonKilljoy]

Jelly donuts for science should be a thing. Can we make this a thing?

[@fabricdragon]

when i "failed" the tongue map, i was told to copy it out of the book or i would fail... so we were all ordered to copy down wrong information, wondering what on earth was wrong with our sense of tastes- but since we were not comparing notes with each other we didnt realize how many of us were "wrong" i remember being very worried something was wrong with me- but we did this in ... 4th grade? 5th?

[@badbiker666]

My mother-in-law was a wonder of weirdness. She was strange in every aspect of her life. It is a wonder her daughter didn't inherit too much of it. She got maybe a little, but not an overwhelming amount, of weirdness. But, relevant to this video, one of the things that was odd about her was her food sensitivities. She claimed that she was allergic to MSG. As Simon explained, it is a taste enhancer. A flavoring. MIL was convinced that she suffered from an allergic reaction whenever she consumed it. I asked her what her reaction was and she couldn't describe it. She only said, "I get sick." Sick how, I wanted to know. Nauseous? Dry mouth? Hives? Headaches? All no. Just "sick." Well, in my experience, people who are allergic to a substance know full well what their reaction is and can describe it in excruciating detail. Not her. The result of her weirdness was whenever we ate out together in a Chinese restaurant (which was relatively often as everyone in the family LOVES it), she would stress to the waitstaff that they must be sure to avoid putting MSG in her food. She would wag her finger at the waiter and stress this in a very stern tone. "Tell the cook I can't eat MSG" she would say with a very cross look on her face. The waiter always said Yes Ma'am, I will do that. Then, when the food arrived at the table, everyone would take a portion of their meal and scoop onto our individual plates. We would often share entrées, because we all loved everything on the table. Including dear MIL. I tried to warn her that no one else requested no MSG in our food, but she would say that it was OK if she had just a little bit. I tried to explain that was not how food allergies/sensitivities worked, but she would wave me off and say that she knows her body and knew how much she could safely consume. Bullshit! She had no food allergies. She also claimed to be deathly allergic to peanuts. She was not. I know because I put crushed peanuts in her food, basically peanut powder, for a decade. She lived with us for 20 years and never once had a reaction to anything I prepared, and yet peanuts was a part of it for years. In a way, I miss the old girl. She was an endless source of amusement for our entire family.

[@eekee6034]

It is a weird mixture of disturbing and funny when a human being behaves this way, but I have a couple of curious stories. The MSG one is personal, about something for which evidence is hard to clearly define, but not absent. The considerably more exciting deadly peanut story highlights a gap in modern scientific knowlege and practice. My body has weird annoying varying responses to eating and it's dfficult to pin down either the symptoms or the cause. MSG hasn't appeared in the ingredients of British food and snacks for a couple of years, and looking back, I see I feel healthier; less run-down without it. And when I had a lot of it, I'd get these vague headaches. Keeping an eye out for clues, I connected it to gluten, particularly this: Some quite normal people including my brother, who is generally an active individual with a fairly normal diet and lifestyle and certainly doesn't have unbalanced concern for his health, have been told by their doctors to limit their intake of gluten although they have no clear allergic response. But that's all I've got on it. :) As for peanuts, I was told a veeery interesting story years ago, containing something which certainly ought to be scientifically investigated in connection with peanut allergy. I was friends with a family who had just moved from Liecester. Part of Liecester was then known as "New Delhi"; it was basically India-town. Being 90s Britain too, practially all the doctors in Liecester hospital were Indian. The father of this family was rushed to hospital with a severe reaction from eating some peanuts; totally out of the blue. The doctor who treated him had a story from the peanut plantations. He said there was another plant, very rare, indistinguishable from the peanut plant even to experiences peanut-pickers, which was deadly poisonous. He said, "If you have 3 of these deadly peanut-lookalikes, there's nothing medical science can do for you; you're dead." He believed one of them had gotten into his packet of peanuts. So what's the truth of the matter? My friend nearly died from eating peanuts, but never thought he had a peanut allergy and ate peanuts again without consequence. The "other plant" I suspect may be a very rare infection of peanut plants; a rare fungus or microbe or _something_ which triggers a violent immune response in humans. That seems more likely to me than an identical-looking plant. Either way, it certainly needs investigating. I suspect millions of people may be deathly afraid of eating things _contaminated by peanut dust,_ unable to share snacks with friends or even buy much convenience food, when their hospital visit was just a one-off. But, of course, this is only a suspicion. It needs a scientific investigation.

[@badbiker666]

@@eekee6034 My MIL definitely did not have a peanut allergy. Have you ever experienced an episode whereby your throat muscles, instead of contracting and relaxing during swallowing, contract and then refuse to relax? This used to happen to my father and I frequently, and the only diagnosis was stress (turns out my father and I drive each other crazy, and not is a good way). That is what happened to my MIL when she happened to be eating peanuts, but she insisted it was an allergy until the day she died. She was insane. This wasn't even the weirdest of her "quirks." Her aversion to MSG was based on something some fool, that she didn't even know, told her once 30 or 40 years ago and she refused to let go of it. I have hundreds of stories.

[@gadgetgirl02]

Sometimes people only have a reaction to an excessive amount of an ingredient, and (if they survive) assume it's an allergy. There was a case with someone drinking an entire bottle of soy sauce on a bet and dying from it. I knew someone who saw a man die from chugging an entire bottle of whiskey on a bet. Too much sugar will make even non-diabetic people sick. I like a lot of food that happens to have MSG in it, but I have had a reaction to food with excessive MSG added: myself and the friend I had the food with were very thirsty for hours, and, although neither of us got headaches, we both felt very unwell. We'd requested the food be made extra-spicy. Rather than adding more chilis, they just added more MSG. A lot more. As for adding peanuts to the food of someone who claims to have a peanut allergy: why the hell was it so important to you to prove yourself right that you risked someone's life? Woo hoo, you were right -- what would have happened to your MIL if you were wrong? Some people do have trouble digesting peanuts: they can cause headaches and other symptoms. If it consistently happens, they may well decide they have an allergy and to quit eating peanuts before they go into anaphylactic shock one day. By the way, the multiple sensitivities without allergies you're describing your MIL as having are signs of chronic stress. The body will start to perceive benign stimuli as hostile and react.

[@badbiker666]

@@gadgetgirl02 The only thing chronic regarding my MIL was her psychopathic need to lie about everything. There was absolutely no chance she would ever have a negative reaction to any of the foods to which she claimed she was sensitive, and I proved that hundreds of times. Neither my wife nor I ever called her on her bullshit because there wouldn't any point to it. She'd just make up more bullshit. The only time we called her bluff was when she insisted that she knew better regarding our children, specifically their diets. Because she did such a good job raising my wife, of course. She shipped my wife off to boarding school. They lived separate (during the school year) for over ten years. How does that constitute "raising" her, I ask. She tried to tell our kids when they were young and impressionable that THEY were sensitive to certain foods, and they would come running to us in tears asking why they weren't allowed to eat those things ever again. We read MIL the riot act whenever she pulled that crap. Eventually, our girls got to the age when they would just nod and say, "Ah Ha" and ignore her "advice." I have a million stories.

[@eekee6034]

@@gadgetgirl02 I didn't know that about chronic stress. Thanks.

[@richardblackmore9351]

American schools continue to teach "please excuse my dear aunt Sally" for the order of operations, despite the fact that it is wrong. The first two, parentheses and exponents are the only absolutes always perform in that order. Multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction are performed from left to right. So anyone who took their teachers literally failed their math tests.

[@LegoDork]

It's well known that smell has a big part in the perception of taste, but texture does as well. When you get a piece of along with your meat, you can almost perceive the little blobs popping and releasing greasy goodness in a spurt.

[@davidbwa]

Child of the 60s. I was taught the 'tongue map' and believed it for years. Fortunately I didn't have to do any science experiments around it.

[@knewledge8626]

After 6 months of marriage I had my taste buds surgically removed.

[@rachelrandant5344]

While I did find that flavor didn’t vary much over my tongue, I found that when the nerves stop responding that result in Bell’s Palsy, flavor receptors change significantly. When the left side of my face was disabled, I could no longer taste sweet flavors. When the right side of my face was disabled, I could no longer taste umami flavors. Interesting!!!

[@kairi99roxas]

oh that ending statement with all the flavor puns was glorious

[@iron_side5674]

I find the Tongue map is actually rather accurate for me. Not for taste in general, but for how intense i experience it. Especially Bitter and sour, very acurate. The rest not so distinct, but still true.

[@Mr.Northman]

Revenge is sweet, revenge is best served cold... So basically, revenge is ice-cream!

[@psmirage8584]

If I met my 8th Grade teacher in a grocery store, I'd be thoroughly shocked, considering he was near retirement over 40 years ago, which would put him over a hundred today.

[@leemarlin9415]

War bad: Oh wait you’re going to send us some money! War good and fun.

[@colosine]

I remember learning this in like the 3rd grade and I called the teacher out on it and asked why they were teaching this false fact and the response was something along the line of "because that's what the book says" it was about then that I lost faith in learning from teachers and started doing my own research on many subjects in schools, there is so much that my school system got wrong and to this day I don't trust educators to educate children

[@icreatedanaccountforthis1852]

I never trusted that tongue diagram was correct because my real life experience never matched that stupid map.

[@fluffycommander]

Mr Whiskers, stop eating my ice cream!

[@mistywolf312]

I can remember being called into the school because my daughter had been cheeky to the teacher, they were having a geology lesson and she had impolitely informed her out loud to the entire class that she had gotten the difference between Magma and Larva wrong. The evidence was still on the board when I got there.

[@RancidAlic3]

There is quite a big difference between Magma and Larva. For once, magma doesn't grow up to be a beautiful butterfly!

[@davel9514]

@@RancidAlic3 For once? Did it used to happen quite often and this is now a rare occurrence? I wonder if magma "growing up" is the reason we have dragon stories? 🤣

[@Ingrid922]

​@@RancidAlic3 Exactly what I was thinking! Most, if not all, insects have a larva stage. Rock has no larva stage.

[@JustMe-xv8fx]

I remember debunking this with warheads and my own process of elimination.

[@ericshelby8813]

I think one reason why the tongue map persists is that, from a scientific point of view, is no big deal. Misunderstanding how taste works isn't going to end the world. It's not like your going to flunk medical school for misunderstanding this.

[@dudewhatsminesay9017]

I did that experiment in a college Anatomy and Physiology class. I graduated with a B.S. in Animal Science. What else was wrong that was in those $500 textbooks!